Scotland's Digital Future: Scottish Public Sector Green ICT Strategy

Measurement and progress reporting

This approach builds upon the experience of the UK HMG Green ICT maturity model. The UK model has much to recommend it but it has been recognised by Scottish public sector organisations that it is time consuming to complete. With this in mind, a light touch version has been developed to allow organisations to quickly understand their Green ICT maturity.

Measurement, monitoring and progress reporting are important in understanding how Scottish public sector organisations are implementing green principles in delivering their ICT.

To measure progress organisations will need to self-assess against a Green ICT Maturity Assessment Model (see Annex A). This is a framework for tracking the progress of each Scottish public sector organisation. It assesses sustainability across different areas of ICT:

• purchasing ICT services;
• managing and Operating ICT services;
• disposing of ICT.

For an organisation to assess itself they will use the workbook in the maturity assessment model that contains a comprehensive set of best practice actions and principles to reduce the environmental impact of the their ICT (see Annex B)

Effectively greening government means making informed changes. It is important to understand and balance the environmental impact of public sector organisations, the ICT it operates, the processes it enables and the outcomes it delivers. Ultimately, organisations must understand the environmental impact of any change it makes. A good understanding will allow forward planning and achievement of aims within the time and resources available.

The Scottish public sector must demonstrate the embedding of green ICT principles into the ICT estate and its business processes, and show progress towards its commitments. It is vital therefore, that the Scottish public sector accounts for and measures progress in a consistent way.

The Scottish public sector will do this through a stepped approach making use of the following tools:

Green ICT Maturity Assessment Model

The Green ICT maturity assessment model provides a common framework to show progress across the whole of the Scottish public sector. It provides a mechanism to embed green ICT impact assessments into government processes and practices, whilst recognising different starting points and opportunities. Each Scottish public sector ICT department is expected to track and report its maturity level.

The Model provides the means to assess sustainability across the whole ICT lifecycle (see Annex A).

Green ICT Workbook

This Green ICT Workbook forms part of the maturity assessment and provides a tool for driving progress. It contains a comprehensive set of green ICT best practice actions and principles to reduce the environmental impact of ICT across the Scottish public sector estate. A variety of best practice actions that can be adopted by organisations to achieve a high level of Green ICT maturity.

It is essential that the ICT requirements of ICT professionals are in alignment with the framework used by procurement professionals. For this reason the procurement maturity model aligns with the Green ICT workbook developed for use by ICT professionals in the Scottish Public Sector ( Annex B).

ICT professionals are encouraged to complete this workbook to assess the behavioural indicators of their own organisation. The best practice examples ( Annex C) and case studies ( Annex F), provide suggestions on how to progress through the levels. By completing the Green ICT workbook, and using the best practice examples and case studies to improve maturity levels, the decisions of ICT professionals should ultimately be in alignment with those of procurement professionals, and the wider public sector with regards to sustainability.

Green ICT Reporting

Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act, 2014.

Wider mandatory reporting of carbon emissions and energy consumption will be reported by all public sector bodies as part of the Procurement Reform (Scotland) Act, 2014. In addition more specific details will be captured through the sustainability reporting that around 150 major public sector bodies are mandated to report to the Energy and Climate Change team.

These reporting methods do not specifically measure an organisations ICT energy impact as the requirement is to capture the organisations total energy consumption.

Climate Change (Scotland) Act, 2009 reporting.

There is a voluntary element to the energy and climate report that is more specific to a sector or discipline and ICT specific information will form part of the 2015/2016 report.

In achieving energy reduction ICT must be considered as an integrated part of how an organisation works and the services it uses and delivers.

Implementation of this strategy will, therefore, take into consideration and align with other initiatives which have elements of greening government.

To be effective and achieve the best results the Scottish public sector should follow the guidance in this strategy and assess themselves against the maturity indicators of the three lifecycle phases to encourage their continuous improvement and to contribute against their organisations green performance.

Data Hosting and Data Centre Strategy reporting.

As the implementation of the data hosting and data centre strategy progresses, work will be undertaken to define a reporting mechanism that will enable organisations to monitor and understand their energy consumption. This will help to identify areas for carbon reduction that will contribute in reducing their data centres PUE to a level of less than 1.8.